This is to inform you that the Nigerian government has agreed to pay around $500 million to the younger brother of Billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, Pramod Mittal’s company in the wake of settling a contract dispute stained by fraud. This decision of the Nigerian government will surely help Lakshmi Mittal’s younger brother Pramod Mittal to find a possible way out of financial distress from Nigerian taxpayers by settling down a contract dispute over a deal that a previous government said was tarnished by fraud. We have explored this story in the following sections of this article. Kindly stick with this page and go through it till the end.
The announcement of $500 million aid from the Nigerian government came after Pramod Mittal’s company won a settlement tied with a Soviet-era steel plant that sucked up over $7 billion without producing any metal in Nigerian public investment. Pramod Mittal’s career in the steel industry has been less glittering than his renowned brother Lakshmi Mittal, a tycoon behind the €20 billion ($21.2 billion) ArcelorMittal SA conglomerate, has a trail of unpaid debts to his name and a string of abandoned factories. Pramod’s Isle of Man-registered Global Steel Holdings Ltd. or GSH, five years ago was put into liquidation more than $167 million owed to Moorgate Industries Ltd. which is the world’s biggest steel traders’ spun-off.
Former Nigeria expert for US intelligence agencies Matthew Page who is now an associate fellow at London-based Chatham House said, “Ajaokuta has been a black hole that has gobbled up billions of dollars, enriching multiple generations of politicians and foreign enablers. This last failed reboot and the giant price tag that came with it is a preview of the next failed re-concessioning attempt. At this point, Ajaokuta’s dilapidated machinery is capable of doing only one thing: making public funds disappear.” Shift to the next section and read more details.
Pramod Mittal stepped into Ajaokuta in 2004, when then-President Olusegun Obasanjo awarded GSH a series of contracts including an arrangement first to manage and later to buy the steel mill. However, Neither Pramod’s representatives nor the spokespeople for the newly elected President Bola Tinubu and Steel Minister Shuaibu Audu responded to requests for comment. Abubakar Malami, Nigeria’s attorney general to earlier this year from 2015 said last year that the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari “rescued the steel industry from interminable and complex disputes as well as saving the taxpayer from humongous damages.”